School of Failure

Graduates from the College of Business strode with confidence into the giant Assembly Hall. While they kept their faces forward we, the audience, leaned back in our individual movie theater style chairs without even noticing the perfect temperature in the building.

The next day, excitement radiated throughout the Gym as graduate candidates from the College of Education poured in wildly scanning the crowd for family members and chattering to friends walking next to them. We, the audience, wriggled on the bleachers while fanning ourselves with the commencement program.

The Business Dean repeatedly reminded the graduates to remain loyal to the University and to demonstrate their appreciation to the school through financial donations. He specifically laid a challenge to be the first to donate enough money so the new LEED platinum Business building could bear their name.

The Education speakers spoke of passion and caring to the point of tears for the lives they would soon be molding without a single mention of the green stuff that so motivates in the business world.

As a graduate from a Business/Economics program I feel free to make these comparisons because I too was instilled with a drive for success in the business world. And although I'm out of the loop for now, I still feel a drive towards success in the fast paced business world.

But while I sat through a cumulative 6 hours of graduation ceremonies this weekend, I thought about the underlying challenge given through both Colleges. And that is to not fear failure because failure means a risk was taken. Even though risks taken may fail, simply the attempt is better than settling with mediocrity.

This is such obvious advice at a graduation ceremony yet I think I had forgotten to embrace the school of failure in my parenting world.

It would be so much easier to skip the talks with Asher about how to handle his money because I know he probably won't pay attention anyway. I'd rather not practice animal sounds with Amelie because she never performs on command anyway. And it would be much faster to simply buy chocolate chip cookies because my oven always seems to burn them anyway (seriously! I'm about to prove I can make a good cookie when we move and I get a new oven).

Such ordinary and mundane tasks might hardly seem like celebrating either a success or failure, but ultimately the way I do these daily tasks will reveal a success or a fail when I watch the way my kids enter the world.

So all you parents out there, be encouraged in whatever average thing you're doing today to embrace even the simplest risk and enter the redeeming school of failure.

And to my brother Sam in your business world, and sister Becky in your education world, Congratulations and I hope you will continue to take those risks of success or failure.